What does it mean coming from Latvia's government head? Our own Parliament has already voted in favour of the nuclear power plant concession agreement, has it not?
Can it be that Dombrovskis and his advisers failed to read the “Report on Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant Project Viability”? That is hardly the reason. More likely, the Latvian Prime Minister was simply unconvinced by the Lithuanian viability report and he still thinks that the project will not be profitable. In other words, Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant is an extremely expensive project that someone will have to pay for in the years to come.
Latvia, he implies, will not be part of that group. Nor will Poland. It means that we will – the three million of us who, by the time the plant is turned on, will not only be significantly older, but also contracted to some two-and-a-half million. Will we manage it?
According to government estimates, the construction should set us back 17 billion litas. Add to that interest, inflation, and the fact that official estimates are without exception several times below the final toll, and it is likely that Visaginas Plant will cost up to 24-25 billion litas. That is roughly the size of our yearly state budget – and even part of that comes from EU funds.
Saying that it is huge money is an understatement. And unless Latvians and Estonians decide to join in, Lithuania itself will have to supply much of it.
And at the same time, we are screaming that the EU is abusing us by not giving several hundred millions to decommission the old nuclear plant. That, you must agree, is weird accounting – being fearful of several-hundred-million deficit now yet eager to foray tens of billions into the red in several years. Is such recklessness justified?
Despite all the optimism radiating from the government, the project has already encountered its first hitches. Latvians are wavering, the concession agreement with Hitachi was supposed to be signed last week, but it was postponed until the end of the year. Perhaps that is a good thing, it will give us time to answer some questions.
For example, if we are planning to export our electricity westwards, can we or anyone else predict, how much energy Polish or German industries and populations will be consuming in one or two decades. We are not even sure there will be any industry to speak of. All energy-related estimates were made a decade ago and inevitably relied on the needs and growth of the day – and therefore they miss the point, which is not necessarily the fault of those who compiled them.
Producers of home appliances and technology do their best to increase energy efficiency. Trends of the past two decades suggest that EU heavy industry might completely move to third world countries. Can it be that Lithuania and the entire EU will be consuming less electricity in the future than now?
It very well can. But no one can say for certain, the consumption might also increase, as it is hoped by the viability report authors.
And yet let's reflect on what we would do with surplus electricity if it turned out to be uncompetitively expensive or the electricity market were oversupplied.
A tsunami caused by euro-zone earthquake can sweep the future plant in seconds.
The only way out would be to force the electricity onto our own grannies and grandpas. State subsidies to follow. And the remaining surplus? We will simply not produce it. But in that case, how will we repay loans taken out to build the plant? Again, state budget. And that sounds like monkey business, as Frank Kruk would put it. Exactly the point that the Latvian Prime Minister, albeit in different words, is making. In that case, the project that is intended as a guarantee of national security will drain the last lifeblood from the state.
Am I saying that if Lithuania remains alone with Hitachi, the nuclear power plant project involves too much opportunism, that it is beyond our means?
Judging from where we stand at the moment, it does seem to be a burden Lithuania can hardly support. But if we tried to look at it from the future perspective, of 10-15 years later, we could find convincing arguments in favour.
Several years ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's prisoner No 1 and, no doubt, an expert on energy, discussed such future perspective in his correspondence with science fiction author Boris Strugatsky.
To Khodorkovsky's remark that the Earth could not sustain every Chinese consuming as much energy as an average American and his question if Scandinavian aspiration to replace cars with bicycles was offering the solution, Strugatsky responded that we would all continue driving cars until the very last minute. According to him, nothing will change even despite the fact that “ominous signs that the consumer civilization is nearing an end will start appearing in 10-15 years, when it is clear that carbohydrate resources are dwindling, while alternative energy sources fail to arrive.”
Strugatsky thinks there will be no catastrophes, the human kind will not perish or even starve to death – the only thing that will die is the current civilization based on humanism, democratic values, and consumer culture; it will be replaced with food ticket system accompanied by local wars over fresh water and oil supplies – the richest part of the world will return to the 19th century with much steam and little electricity.
Strugatsky then goes on to suggest that the only means to save the well-off part of the world from such destiny are thermonuclear reactors – something the mankind has not yet mastered. The period that Strugatsky refers to is 2018-2023. That is when Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant should start operations.
And if these science-fiction predictions are correct, perhaps our government's ambition to build a new nuclear plant is not so silly after all?
Perhaps not, but with one significant qualification – if the plant was already running or the construction was nearing completion. However, a long road awaits ahead before that happens. A road filled with mines, we should add. Why? Because a tsunami caused by euro-zone earthquake can sweep the future plant in seconds.
The euro, tormented by Spanish and Greek flu, is declining. Litas is pegged to euro, therefore its exchange rate is going down as well. Lithuania mostly sells its produce in euros and buys raw materials in US dollars. Dollar is going up compared to litas. The more trouble-ridden the euro zone, the more currency exchange rates shred our money into pieces. Can a country, where even middle-class citizens will most likely be unable to pay heating bills next winter, carry through with a business project as risky as a nuclear plant?
President Grybauskaitė has already admitted that Europe is threatened by a second wave of crisis. It would seem that Strugatsky is right when he says that today, “social optimism is a punishable offence”. Mark Twain's 1908 remark, that the sole difference between 19th and 20th centuries is that “optimist” and “fool” were not synonymous terms in the 19th century, seems also hopelessly antiquated. In 21st century, if you call a patent fool “optimist”, he has a right to feel offended.
Should we or should we not build the nuclear power plant? Such construction is beyond what our state can support. But doing nothing is no better. What remains is to toss a coin – heads (coat of arms) or tails (money). That's more or less what Parliament did. It was tails.
